Since his defense strategy, claiming that a 16-year-old rape victim wasn't "so" drunk, has failed, the lawyer for one of the two Steubenville football players convicted of rape plans to appeal a guilty verdict, and is now claiming that the 16-year-old rapist's brain wasn't "developed" enough and his client should not have to be on a sex offenders list for life.

Walter Madison, the attorney for Ma'lik Richmond, went on Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday, explaining why he would appeal Sunday's verdict by 37-year juvenile court judge Thomas Lipps, and especially his sentencing of Richmond to at least one year in a rehabilitation center and the requirement to register as a sex offender. You can watch the video below, but here's the key "logic" from Madison:

I don't believe that a person at 75 years old should have to explain for something they did at 16 when scientific evidence would support your brain isn't fully developed ... when evidence in the case would suggest that you were under the influence.

[...]

"We have the right to appeal and that is a right we will be exercising," said Walter Madison, Richmond's attorney.

To review: Madison is arguing that a 16-year-old's brain is not fully functional enough to determine whether raping an unconscious girl is a bad decision. This comes after Madison made news during his last media tour, when he insisted before last week's rape trial that the Jane Doe victim's silence and unconsciousness amounted to consent. He said before the trial that the girl "made a decision to excessively drink... and leave with the boys," and that an Instagram photo of the girl being dragged by the

They still know right and wrong, regardless of whether the brain is fully developed, or not.

You don’t need a fully developed adult brain (and not all adults have fully developed brains btw) to understand the damn Golden Rule.

This is just assinine, and what I believe is that every shyster lawyer who uses this defense ought to be executed on the spot. And then his family fined $100,000 for wasting the courts’ time and providing crap legal counsel to his client.

Society has long conceded this point *to the extent that juveniles are handled differently than adults*. Like it or don’t like it a 15 year old is not handled the same as a 25 year old by the criminal justice system.

Having said that - the perp has already *had* that benefit - so in my view there is nothing more to be gained. They were tried as juveniles, sentenced as juveniles and all was done in accordance with how things of this sort are generally handled.

According to Whoopi Goldberg, this isn’t really rape-rape. Just because a young girl, a minor, is chemically impaired doesn’t make it “rape rape”. Even if you resist and must be orally/anally sodomized.

The Obama administration let Polanski walk. The Democrats’ war on women continues.

Can we throw out both the trial and the decision to try him as a juvenile? The good news, Ma'lik, is that now you only have to tell your neighbors about your sex offense for forty years. The bad news is that they share a cell block with you for that forty years.

14
posted on 03/19/2013 1:38:12 PM PDT
by KarlInOhio
(Choose one: the yellow and black flag of the Tea Party or the white flag of the Republican Party.)

Give him 25 years in prison. Plenty of time for his brain to "develop". Obviously his brain is incapable of being free to move about in civil society. He needs to be confined to prevent additional harm to society from his "undeveloped" brain. It's not a defense. It's an excuse for a defense attorney shooting blanks.

So - for the ‘boys’; guess we move ‘drinking age’; driving age; Military Service age; up to ‘forty’? Though, that still leaves some of the boys; just still; being ‘boys’; no? At least; if they are raised as Liberals.

What I’d like to see is that as you finish the ninth grade...they bring you into a room and announce that you are now considered an adult and can be charged with adult crimes. Bring a court expert in and lay out the potential charges, and the length of time for each for a state-related offense. They deserve to know just how bad things can get.

They still know right and wrong, regardless of whether the brain is fully developed, or not.

I don't agree with you on that. I don't know that this jerk of a kid had even been taught right from wrong [I'd suspect not, but that would be racist]. Nonetheless, that does not or should not spare him from punishment.

That may be the only way he does learn.

31
posted on 03/19/2013 3:32:57 PM PDT
by BfloGuy
(The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment. -Ludwig von Mises)

I would limit the sex offender registering stigma to maybe 10 years. Making it a life time thing is ridiculous. Boys like sex,.... is that a crime now?

Sex without consent is a crime. I suspect it has long been that way in the United States. It might not be where you're from, but that's not what we're discussing here. For your edification (courtesy of Springfield Reformer): Competency is an important legal concept and these exact scenarios are a familiar topic in crim law. Tort too. Bottom line, its about consent. If a person cant or wont give consent, for any reason, its rape. Drugs and alcohol are well known to impair judgement, and without capacity for ordinary good judgment, you cant assign consent. This is true even if the impairment is just being a little too young. You can have a fully aware person who actually wants to participate, but the law will deem their judgment impaired by their youth, making consent a legal impossibility. Statutory rape. So this is why the defense was trying to find some point on the drunkenness spectrum where he could claim she was not yet impaired. He needed that to get consent. Apparently that strategy was unsuccessful.

You know, I have seen you making these absurd comments on a few threads about this rape case. Yes, boys like sex. They (and girls) are biologically programmed to reproduce and sexual feelings are enhanced by our responses to stimuli.

However, what these guys did isn’t merely “having sex”. They sexually assaulted someone who was unable to defend herself or scream for help or in any other way keep these animals from doing this to her.

If this is how “sex” is to you, I would suggest that you are mentally ill. I do think that you are actually the kind of liberal who goes on conservative sites and pretends to be extreme in the hopes that someone agrees with you, and you can then point and laugh at the Neanderthals.

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